[mkerr64]

Hey there

i currently have a 250gb drive in my Mac Pro and have roughly 70 gb of free space
im not sure if i should get a 150gb raptor drive or to go with a regular sata 7200rpm 500gb drive or perhaps a 750gb

how much of a difference will the raptor make?
and is it worth getting?

Thanks

[svtcontour]

If you're hardcore and run tons of stuff at the same time which may access your system drive (I assume your raptor will be your system drive) then it might be worth while.

I run 15K SCSI stuff in my PC so using regular SATA 7200RPM drives is just torture. I've played with a Raptor and its not bad. I'd say its 85% as good as a 10K SCSI drive - regardless of what benchmarks show (which show it being faster but real world usage and feedback from the system say otherwise to me).

Still if I had to use SATA, then for sure my startup drive would be a raptor and my secondary drives where I store data would be 7200's

[mkerr64]

and in addition to this how easy is it to move your system drives to the new hdd?
how would you do that on a Mac Pro?

[svtcontour]

I think Carbon Copy Cloner will do this - move one drives content to another.

[pcguy1]

I would think a 500/750G "regular" sata drive is more useful then a slightly quicker 150G raptor drive in the long run

[bowwowman]

IF you use disk-intensive applications, it WILL make a difference in data access times, as well as faster booting and shutdown times when used as a boot drive. Otherwise, you have to look at your space requirements vs. price.

If you need BIG storage space, then obviously any of the 500-750GB, SATA II Seagates/Maxtors/WD's will provide that at a lower cost/GB than the raptor ever could. Look for one with 16mb of cache for a little more speed too...

And yes, CCC or SuperDuper will clone your existing HD to the new one really easily and quickly and with minimal fuss

[phantomac]

Originally Posted by pcguy1 

I would think a 500/750G "regular" sata drive is more useful then a slightly quicker 150G raptor drive in the long run

Actually, it's *not* only slightly quicker, which you can find out reading all the available tests for the 150GB Raptor drive. It's massively quicker.

For maximum speed use more than one Raptor in a RAID-0 configuration and an additional drive for data storage, should you need it.

[mkerr64]

so what is your view of the seagate drives?
Seagate 500GB 7200 8MB Ultra ATA-100 EIDE OEM Hard Drive ST3500841A at TigerDirect.com

and
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB 7200 16MB Serial ATA-300 OEM Hard Drive ST3750640AS at TigerDirect.com

meaning quality?
cost?
and how reliable are they?
etc...?

[- - e r i k - -]

Are you using your mac pro for video and/or audio? Then yes.

[bowwowman]

Originally Posted by mkerr64 

so what is your view of the seagate drives?
Seagate 500GB 7200 8MB Ultra ATA-100 EIDE OEM Hard Drive ST3500841A at TigerDirect.com

and
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB 7200 16MB Serial ATA-300 OEM Hard Drive ST3750640AS at TigerDirect.com

meaning quality?
cost?
and how reliable are they?
etc...?

Either drive would be fine, but you have to get the SATA model for use in a mac pro. Seagate is well known for their reliability, and their 5 year warrranty too

As for cost, you just have to shop around to find the best price, and TD is a goodplace to start, but check several other places before deciding where to get it from.